Questões de Concursos UNICAMP

If apes go extinct, so could entire forests

Bonobos eat a lot of fruit, and fruit contains seeds.
Those seeds travel through a bonobo’s digestive system
while bonobo itself travels around the forest. A few hours
later, the seeds end up being deposited far from where the
fruits were plucked. And that is where the new trees come
from.
According to a paper recently published, if the
bonobos disappeared, the plants would also likely go
extinct, for many trees and plants species in Congo rely
almost exclusively on bonobos for seed dispersal.
The bonobo has two major functions here. First of all,
many seeds will not germinate well unless they have been
“handled” by another species. Stomach acids and intestinal
processes make the seed more able to absorb water and
later sprout.
Secondly, many seeds will not succeed if they remain
too close to their parental trees. The seeds that fell to the
ground near their parents did not survive because they
were choked off by the nearby plants. The bonobos eat
about 3,5 hours every day and travel a mean of 1.2
kilometers from meal sites before defecating.

(Adaptado de http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown
/if-apes-go-extinct-so-could-entire-forests/.)